Clown of the Dead

Three friends must discover what’s behind the killings of local children, the victims drew the same picture before they died. They uncover the evil spirit of the clown of the dead and must send it back to hell before more children are murdered.

Introduction

Using a clown as a medium for horror have always been effective, specially to those who grew up watching and getting traumatized by Tim Curry’s Pennywise from IT (1990) Which by the way, in my opinion, is a better version compared to Bill Skarsgård’s. I had high hopes of getting my childhood horror trauma back with this movie, but just the first 5 minutes alone, I knew it would suck big time. Directed by Awi Suryadi.

“Clown of the Dead (2015) is an Indonesian horror film about three college friends who investigate a series of mysterious child deaths. They uncover a vengeful circus clown spirit that is causing the murders and must figure out how to stop it from achieving immortality before it claims more victims.”

Characters

Very forgettable cast of characters and it felt like a high school project or something. I couldn’t care less whether they lived or d!ed, I was just waiting for it to happen and curious on how they’ll do it.

None of them had me feeling that they were really in danger. They couldn’t project their fear to the viewers that’s why it didn’t feel like a horror movie.

Lack of Music Accompaniment

I think they tried to focus on the dialogue and the conflict at hand, hence the lack of musical arrangements on most scenes, unfoftunately it backfired big time and I ended up nodding off a couple of times.

Dialogue was Stup!d

Honestly, I could care less what they were saying. Just the first 10 minutes alone, I knew that the conversations were unimportant and not gripping at all. If they had a great script, I’d be on the edge of my seat, just listening to the story unfold.

The Clown

The clown design was actually pretty decent. Though it would’ve been better if it had a dialogue. It lowered it’s threat level considerably and became more of a creepy stalker clown, sort of like those that would follow you in dark alleyways.

The backstory of the clown seemed like a revised edition of Freddy Krueger’s, but not told as well.

What I Didn’t Like

• The d3aths that happened wasn’t very impactful, it felt like it just passed by, and the deaths were mainly children yet the feeling of loss was lacking.
• I nodded off like 3 times because of uninteresting dialogue coupled with lack of music.
• The clown wasn’t as threatening as it should’ve been.
• Pace was too slow, the length of the movie was prolonged by unnecessary dialogue.

Final Thoughts

The poster for Clown of the Dead was very well made, unfortunately it didn’t live up to my expectations of it. The clown himself was more of a creep than a killer. He’s not as scary as one would think, and it was the biggest let down aside from the crappy dialogue. Another recent clown horror genre released was Clown in a Cornfield (2025), also a skippable flick but much better than this one.